In this paper we present a tool set for flight-testing of UAS on mission level. Research at the Institute of Flight Systems (IFS) is focused on automated mission support paradigms for manned and unmanned platforms. Regularly the validity and significance of implemented prototype systems has to be tested during the full course of a mission, including hostile and friendly forces and communication with ATC and C2. Further to investigate on common and platform specific functions such tests need to be performed with different airborne vehicles. This greatly expands the state space of experiments, due to two main factors, the environmental complexity and the varying of work share between man and machine. The resulting problems are analyzed in detail and a concept for a tool set to simulate these conditions and to control most of the variables during experiments is presented. The paper explains the design considerations of the main components of this tool set, including hardware abstraction, communication middle-ware, environment simulation as well as human-in-the-loop observation system. The tool set was successfully used to test single UAV scenarios both for simulation and flight tests. Selected use cases are presented along with some of their experimental results.    «

In this paper we present a tool set for flight-testing of UAS on mission level. Research at the Institute of Flight Systems (IFS) is focused on automated mission support paradigms for manned and unmanned platforms. Regularly the validity and significance of implemented prototype systems has to be tested during the full course of a mission, including hostile and friendly forces and communication with ATC and C2. Further to investigate on common and platform specific functions such tests need to b...    »